Speaker 1: Tim Davies, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)Speaker 2: Romain Tales, Government, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)Speaker 3: Dhanaraj Thakur, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)

Open contracting consists on the global practice of transparency within the contracting policies of the different levels of government. Open public procurement data play a huge role within open contracting, as procurements are an important source of public information on the way public funds are spent, public policies are led, and the way data circulates within modern societies. Such data are then easily reusable by civil society, economic players as well as control and audit agencies.

As this topic is gaining momentum internationally, especially through the Contracting 5 (a group of 6 countries collaborating on open contracting) and the Open Contracting Partnership’s efforts (the OCP is a former WBG program that is now a NGO), presenting open contracting and its implication to the different kinds of worldwide stakeholders is pivotal. The more important the international network of proponents and practitioners gets, the more ambitious uses can be developed such as the affordable access to the internet. Relying on this last example, this session will deliver a concrete example around transparency in contracting for spectrum, telecoms PPPs, and procurement from Universal Service Funds. Those are issues of interest to the future of the governance of the Internet and governance of the networks’ infrastructure.

Format:

Round Table - 60 Min

Interventions:

Tim DAVIES, the co-author of the Open Contracting Data Standard, will share experiences as a proponent of open contracting and from supporting adoption of the open contracting data standard around the world. OCDS is an internationally recognized framework for publication of structured open data on contracting.

Romain TALES is a senior public servant of the French PMO digital service Etalab, responsible for coordinating the Government’s open data policy with the different administration. His intervention is designed to illustrate to the public servants in the room and connected on the broadcast of this session that implementing open contracting within public policies is possible, and how and it can be done.

Ania CALDERON [TO BE CONFIRMED] is a former public servant for the Government of Mexico and senior open data proponent as she is now the executive director of the Open Data Charter, a major collaboration between governments and experts working to open up data worldwide. Her participation to the session will highlight the global open data positive impacts, especially regarding the transparency within public procurements.

Dhanaraj THAKUR is Senior Research Manager at the Alliance for Affordable Internet and a member of the Web Foundation. As an experienced researcher, he will provide concrete examples and insights on the transparency of procurements relating to networks and Internet Access.

Diversity:

North / south country diversity, Government/civil society diversity reached as both sides are involved.

First, the introduction given by the moderator (Tim DAVIES) will explain what is open contracting and its relevance to the IGF. He will then shortly introduce the different participants by explaining their background and the reason of their presence. [7 minutes]
The first participant (Ania CALDERON) will develop the opportunities that trickles down from open contracting, explaining why the open data is a concrete manner to improve the digital governance of a society. [10 minutes]
The second (Romain TALES) will give insights on how an open contracting policy can be designed either from scratch (using the example of countries such as Ukraine) or as a complement to deeply rooted existing practices (such as in France). [10 minutes]
The third speaker (Dhanaraj THAKUR) will link the open contracting process with concrete improvements within the field of transparency in the telecoms, internet access markets. [10 minutes]
The transition and time management provision between each intervention of this first round is estimated to 3 minutes.
The second round will let the moderator ask a specific introductory discussion toward a more open conversation, including questions form the on-site attendance and online followers. [20 minutes]
Total length: 60 minutes.

Onsite Moderator:

Tim Davies

Online Moderator:

Georg Neumann

Rapporteur:

Romain Tales

Discussion Facilitation:

the floor will be open to questions and remarks from the public during the second part of the session.

Online Participation:

interested attendants will be given the opportunity to participate to the conversation before the conference, in order for them to provide the participants with their contributions on the matters dealt with during the session. A conversation on an open-source messaging system such as RIOT will also be open to the public so as to confront the different POVs.